When I was 9 I (and my friends) considered having "battles" where we hit each other with sticks to be one of the best ideas we've ever had. Our solution when a kid nearly got got hit in the eye with a willow switch ... was to ban willow switches.

We also jumped out of trees using a trash bag as a parachute. Luckily we had just enough sense to jump just under the "break a leg" height.

That doesn't make it a universal truth or general hamster behaviour. We've played outside with our hamster plenty of times as kids, it never ran away.

In fact, the only animal that we had run off was the turtle ... it was found 3 month later in a garden a couple of houses down the block.

So, you were stupid until you tried something and learned from it?

You don't see the parallels here?